The Paolo Galli Collection

From 10 October 2024 to 20 January 2025
Venice, Ca’ Rezzonico – Museo del Settecento Veneziano

Curated by Alberto Craievich

In autumn 2024, Ca’ Rezzonico will be celebrating the addition of the ambassador Paolo Galli donation to the Cabinet of Drawings and Prints of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia. It comprises 216 sheets of Italian masters from the 16th to the 20th century. By the quality of the specimens, variety of techniques and types, number of artists documented (from the rarest petits-maîtres to the most famous names), it is the most important acquisition of graphic works since the Nuccia and Riccardo Musatti bequest in 1967.
The result of a private passion, cultivated over the years with the help of great scholars in the field such as Philip Pouncey, Terisio Pignatti and Mario Di Giampaolo, Galli built up the collection through acquisitions at the principal auctions and from specialist dealers, without a precise plan, following his personal taste and fascination with a secret world embodying each artist’s creative moments.

In addition to the classic names of the Venetian masters of the 18th century, such as Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo, Giambattista Piazzetta, Antonio and Francesco Guardi, Gaspare Diziani, Francesco Fontebasso, the collection above all includes Italian painters of other schools, in particular those of Bologna, Rome and Florence. This is particularly significant for the Foundation’s Drawings and Prints Department, enabling it to expand its collections beyond Venice in a broad and detailed way. In fact, although it is rightly numbered among the most important in the peninsula, its holdings, with splendid exceptions, are by its nature and formation purely Venetian.

This is the first time that Agostino Carracci, Bertoja, Cavalier d’Arpino, Giovanni Baglione, Figino, Giorgio Vasari, Francesco Vanni and many others have entered our collections.
And not only old masters: it includes Italian 20th-century works by Cadorin, Cagli, Mafai, Severini, Sironi and Vedova, documenting as far as possible the history of Italian graphics. There are also some anonymous drawings, attributable to regional schools, which still reveal points of interest: particularly felicitous execution, an unusual technique or a debate over attribution among the experts.

What is most surprising, when examining the collection in its entirety, is the variety of the works, the different types of sheets in which the human figure predominates: studies of anatomy or drapery, crowded compositions, portraits and caricatures. It is also a colourful collection, as if to dispel the most traditional clichés about graphic works. Even the least attentive observer will be surprised by the prepared papers and the variety of techniques: pencil, chalk, ink of all shades and watercolours.
Some of the drawings have been presented in exhibitions or publications and volumes devoted to graphics, while others have been available for private viewing for years. All have been photographed for the occasion, and will be the subject of a catalogue specifically devoted to the collection.

Admission to the exhibition from 10 October 2024 to 20 January 2025 with the Museum’s hours and ticket.